The Therapeutic Effect of Lithium Carbonate on a Patient with a Forty-Eight Hour Periodic Psychosis

Abstract

In a series of previous papers fairly detailed studies of an individual patient with a precisely timed forty-eight hour periodic psychosis have been presented. Jenner (1963), and Jenner, Gjessing, Cox, Davis-Jones, Hullin and Hanna (1967) have presented the clinical findings. Essentially, for thirteen years the patient regularly suffered from one day of depression alternating with one day of hypomania. The change of state occurred during sleep, usually between 02.00 and 03.00 hours. There were only eight major defects of the cycle in ten years. The timing of the cycle was however influenced by the environment; this was confirmed when the patient lived in an artificial environment in which a day and night totalled twenty-two hours instead of twenty-four. The psychotic cycle then became one of forty-four hours rather than forty-eight (Jenner, Goodwin, Sheridan, Tauber and Lobban (1968)).